When it comes to presents I never know what Daughter will come up with.

Not for her a gift of a sweater or a pair of socks. She invariably comes up with something I would never have thought of, such as a woolly cap with lights on it [great for putting out the bin or finding something in a dark corner] or a set of tools that all fold up into a hammer like a Swiss knife.

She called up on my birthday and gave me a carrier bag. It contained what looked like three ordinary lightbulbs and two long sausage shaped plastic bags.

The lightbulbs were in fact lightbulbs but not the type for lighting a room. They were for the garden. I hung them off a tree outside Herself’s window and they soak up sunlight during the day and then shine brilliantly in the dark. Beautiful.

The sausage bags in fact contained bird food in long strings of netting which I was to hang off a tree or two. She said they were a weird present but were in fact part of another present which she had ordered off the Interweb but hadn’t yet arrived. What kind of strange article could be associated with garden bird food?

A few days later she arrived and the mystery was solved. She had got me one of those wildlife cameras that you stick outside and it’s triggered by motion whereupon it either takes photographs or a clip of film. It has infrared so it works by day or night.

I decided to hang the first string of bird food to attract some birds before I mounted the camera. I wanted to mess around with the latter first to get the hang of it. The following morning the bird food was gone. The entire thing had disappeared, netting and all. It was high of the ground and was quite heavy so I can’t even guess what took it. A marauding fox? A badger?

Anyway I mounted the camera to take some experimental shots. I had a look at it a day later and the damned memory was full – it had been filming branches blowing in the wind! I moved the camera to point to an area that was clear of branches and waited for another 48 hours. Again the memory was full because there was a tree in the distance moving n the breeze. About four gigabytes of darkness or a blank garden. Up to that point I had actually filmed just one item of wildlife – a magpie hopping around on the lawn.

Yesterday I changed several of the settings. I set it to photograph only with no video and also reduced the sensitivity. I remounted it outdoors and waited. I noticed Penny wandering in front of it so hopefully she’d act as my first model.

I checked the camera this morning. Nothing! I had forgotten to switch the darned thing on.

I have now hung the second net of birdfood and have wired it securely to a branch. I have reset the camera.

Now all I have to do is wait….